This invention relates to coin apparatus, and more particularly to such apparatus for controlling the operation of a vending machine or the like.
The invention involves an improvement on the coin apparatus which has been supplied for many years by National Vendors Division of UMC Industries, Inc., St. Louis, Mo., assignee of this application, known as the ACMR coin mechanism, for controlling the operation of manually operated (as distinguished from electrically operated) vending machines such as cigarette machines. Reference may be made to U.S. Pat. Nos. 2,993,581, 2,991,867, 3,028,940, 3,149,709 and 4,036,347 relating to and showing the development of that mechanism. The last of these relates to a revision of the mechanism to extend its capacity up to $1.30 with a differential of 70 cents, for example, between the lowest and highest prices. This, however, has not gone far enough to take care of possible increase in prices of packages of cigarettes above $1.30. There are thousands of National Vendors manual cigarette vending machines now on location that may not be capable of vending at the prices such as will be required, and buyers of machines now want to be certain that they can be used to vend cigarettes at higher prices.